Some 16 years ago, The Boston Globe published an article about a jobless man who haunted Marsh Plaza, at the center of Boston University. The picture showed a curious figure in a long overcoat, hunched beneath a black fedora near the central sculpture. via Pocket

The Strange Case of the Missing Joyce Scholar Some 16 years ago, The Boston Globe published an article about a jobless man who haunted Marsh Plaza, at the center of Boston University. The picture showed a curious figure in a long overcoat, hunched beneath a black fedora near the central sculpture. Added June 14, 2018 at 11:25AM

We discussed “Gargantua and Pantagruel” and “Don Quixote” and “Tristram Shandy.” He considers them all to be “antic” works, his coinage for books that are marked by a “comic take on the encyclopedic narrative just as the ‘Iliad’ is a tragic take on an encyclopedic narrative.” Those novels are playful, like “Ulysses,” but they mean to embrace and comprehend a sense of everything, and it’s this sense of totality and the longing for it that drives Kidd, too.

One “Ulysses,” currently available online, has a long, weird riff inserted on Page 160, announcing that you will now be reading “The Secret Confessions of a Conservative,” where the anonymous writer explains that his pro-life, pro-death-penalty positions are so consistent that “if an embryo or fetus commits murder, then he should be aborted.”

It’s almost too pat an ending for an author who was asked about all those errors nearly a century ago. “These are not misprints,” he said, “but beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of.”

The Strange Case of the Missing Joyce Scholar
Two decades ago, a renowned professor promised to produce a flawless version of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated novels: “Ulysses.” Then he disappeared.
John Kidd

Jack Hitt. NYTimes Magazine. June 12/17, 2018

. . . . .

“As much as humanly possible, the 19th-century dictionary of English is in here,” he told me. His translation is titled “Isaura Unbound,” and he wanted me to understand its ambition: When the book is finished, it will be a complete reordering of one entire English dictionary into a single work of art.

Some 16 years ago, The Boston Globe published an article about a jobless man who haunted Marsh Plaza, at the center of Boston University. The picture showed a curious figure in a long overcoat, hunched beneath a black fedora near the central sculpture. via Pocket

Some 16 years ago, The Boston Globe published an article about a jobless man who haunted Marsh Plaza, at the center of Boston University. The picture showed a curious figure in a long overcoat, hunched beneath a black fedora near the central sculpture. via Pocket